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You are here: Home › Blog

An IBM product name is a name like no other


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I hinted that I had some information from the conference call yesterday.  Nothing in there was private or nondisclosure since it revolved around marketing that they will be pushing more and more through Q1 of 2005.  Well guess what, we are in Q1 of 2005 so here we go.

  • The name of Lotus Workplace will transform and slowly move to IBM Workplace.  Lotus and Websphere will continue as brands of course
  • IBM Workplace will get more attention as this moves forward as this is the natural evolution of IBM.  There will be continued marketing around Lotus and Websphere.
  • IBM Workplace is a product family and not a product in itself.  There will be no version numbers associated when referring to IBM Workplace.  But the actual parts of the family will definitely have the version number.
  • WorkplaceTM and the subcomponents are now trademarks of IBM.  So when used you need the little TM thingy.

So you should start seeing this with the 2.5 release.  If you plan on attending the Workplace Forum at Lotusphere, you will here IBM Workplace everywhere and pushed as the name.  All marketing and website links will be redirected also.

Ok, so I gave the rundown, what does it mean to me?  Hmmm, not much in terms of change.  I am concerned with the marketing around Lotus (Ed will have my head for these comments).  If the natural evolution is towards WorkplaceTM then why would the reps remember anything but that?  I am only speaking from experience in dealing with the IBM sales reps over the years at customer sites.  As the new focus moves, it works in direct inverted proportion to what they recall in their heads and sell.  You forget the other stuff and focus on the hot market.

The product family idea is not new.  We have seen this with Domino in some ways and the extended product families.  Websphere also falls into that area sometimes.  Unfortunately when you say Domino someone thinks server and the same for Websphere.  If we want Portal we say Portal.  So saying WorkplaceTM still leads me not to the family but to some installed product.  I guess that takes time getting used to.

As for the trademark.  Wow, what a word to trademark.  Workplace.  I sit in my workplace writing this blog entry wondering where those in my workplace will be heading for lunch today.  I also wonder if they are using parts of the WorkplaceTM that we have installed.  IBM Workplace MessagingTM  2.5 is one of those thing we use in the workplace.  I am only making fun, there is plenty of other products out there that do the same thing.  It is just how the word is used and that is what they were trying to embed in us for making our slides and other marketing materials.